Page 4 of A Subtle Scar
Rice groaned. “That should be fun. We might have to find someone from outside the local university who can tell us what these mean. That Horus eye?”
“It’s often used in preservation spells, things to keep produce fresh. If it’s supposed to do that here”—I reached out to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, any small spell—“it’s lacking the magic to do so. Relationships at the university still strained after the last case?” I asked, referring to the case I’d met them on.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Rice said.
“If you need an expert to testify as well as help you out, I can always check the FIS’s approved list. Could even make the call.”
Rice looked up from her tablet. “You have an approved list. Makes me very jealous.”
“I know, right?” I put my hands in my pockets, longing to be back in the warm car. “Solving crime does work differently on the federal level.” I leaned in. “I will say that a lot of the agents I’ve worked with aren’t as competent as you, Detective.”
I made it sound like flattery, but I actually meant it. On top of knowing she needed to delegate, Rice was a good investigator. She had gumption. She didn’t see victims as a case file number but as people who left behind holes in the world that no one else could fill. Holes that would always burn and ache, every moment of every day, even the days when you almost,almostforgot.
“Every compliment I can get, Chandler. You want to stay on for the raising of the corpse?”
I nodded at Rice and Deacon, who was clearly waiting for someone to tell him he was good to go.
“Sure.”
The vic had given them her name, Margo Cooper, but she’d not seen anything when she’d been tortured and murdered. She’d said it had been dark, and she’d been on the ground, cold metal digging into her back, and the cutting had started.
At that point, her essence had slipped, and Deacon had been unable to get anything else from her, so there was no immediate lead on the perpetrator. She’d felt and heard everything that had been done to her, and it wasn’t pretty. She’d kept repeating thatit hurt. I filed the info away, not sure whether I would need it again.
I was glad I was never the one who made notifications of a death and told such details to family members. To this day, I wasn’t sure whether it was easier not to know that a loved one’s last memories were pain or whether you’d want to know what had happened to them.
Telling Rice to call me if she needed me, I got back into my car and turned up the heating. The rest of the drive was uneventful, and I was still relatively early, taking the last turn into Milton at around five in the afternoon.
When I’d chatter with Lionel—when we talked about cases and magic and procedure—the Devil usually dropped him in New Cassel during my lunch break. I’d never been to their house before despite the standing invitation. Of course, my expectation had been that it would be ostentatious. That the house was basically the only one on the block, and that it sat there like some rural castle against the backdrop of trees and greenery, I hadn’t foreseen.
My invite had contained the helpful tip that there was parking behind the house at the end of the drive, so I turned onto the gravel and admired the tidy garden and the stylish mansion.
It had a sandstone exoskeleton that flaunted fancy glass and metal walls like a preening bird of paradise flaunts his feathers. The combined effect was just shy of being gaudy, and I suspected it had been the kind of design adventure that architects had fought over.
The place where I’d grown up had been grandiose like that too, but on a different level, leaning toward the look and feel of old money and unchanging tradition. I liked that Lucy and Lionel’s place had all these tidy corners and edges. It made it look clean and open, inviting. Those edges weren’t the kind of corners you’d get snagged on or trip over.
I parked the car and collected my overnight bag from the trunk. I heaved a small sigh at the thought of sleeping in a real bed instead of my own very comfortable couch, but a single night wasn’t so bad, and a lot of the time, hotels or guest rooms didn’t bother me too much.
I followed a garden path whose gray flagstones cut between flowerbeds with early spring flowers in full bloom, the scent of hyacinths and primroses saturating the air. I was pretty sure it was too early for all of them, so one of the hosts must have done magic to the garden.
The front door noticeably didn’t have the kind of door sign I’d have expected. Instead, there was a metal plate that looked like it had been recently commissioned, and it was the absolutely cheesiest thing. It readLucy & Nelly, and around their names, a heart had been etched into the metal.
I smiled and rang the doorbell. The angel opened it a handful of seconds later.
“Chandler!” Metatron said, her face lighting up. She was wearing a creamy, doll-pink blouse today with a berry red skirt that reached barely to the middle of her thigh. Her blonde hair was curled and flowed over her shoulders. “You’re here for the early entertainment. Good. I may have made too much food. Come in.”
“Mistress Trony, hello,” I said and pulled a small box with chocolates out of my bag. “A little something for you as a thank-you for organizing all of this.”
She stared at the box, corkscrew curls dipping forward to frame her face. “You got me chocolates,” she said, then took them reverently with both hands. Her nail polish matched her blouse, and the white nail art on it was explicitly pornographic. “You…care enough to bring me chocolates.”
I shrugged. “Seemed only right after how many coffees you’ve gotten me. Love the nails, by the way.”
“Ah. Thank you.” The angel seemed dazed. Then she smiled and straightened, tucked her hair back behind her ear. “You care. Thank you.”
“Sure I care. Shoes on or off?”
Her jaw dropped, but she controlled herself pretty fast and smoothed her expression back to sweetly welcoming. “You may keep them on, Chandler.”
“I don’t think I should.” I slipped out of them and put them to the side of the door where a mat had been placed for that purpose. “Your floors are too clean for that.”
